Masculinity Can Free You Up for Real This Time

Trade a life of survival for a life of creation.

These steps require some real work and a long term commitment. There is nothing “overnight” about this approach.

“Mind over matter.” “Captain of your own ship.” “Create your own destiny.”

These ideas are true, except when they are false.

Follow along here, and I will give you six steps towards freeing yourself up and creating a new story. For real this time.

We can create a new story at any time. In fact, we already always are. The question is whether we are creating our life freely or whether the story continues to be written by something old.

Expansion or contraction are the only two ways to go in the universe.

Are you expanding into your most creative, expressive self? Or are you contracting back towards survival?

The game on the planet, for people like us, is a moment by moment choice to uncover free will and liberate it from the shackles of deep memory. This is a quiet choice. Unless you attain a quiet space within, there is no way to know which choice you are really making, in this moment.

There are plenty of people on the planet for whom survival is their entire world. If you are reading this, you also have the option of stepping into the world of creation. But if you are like me, sometimes you find yourself back in the world of survival.

Personally, when I am not vigilant, I can show up to work with “not good enough” playing in the background. If I am not paying attention, the predictable result of the noisy chatter in my head is indecision. I can get distracted by comparing myself to others.

These may not be the hard-wired voices inside of you but have you done the work to identify the voices that are?

In each of our stories, there is what we want. Then there is what there really is.

Seeing what is actually showing up in your life and telling the truth about it is powerful.

Whether you like it or not, the true hard-wired voices inside of you are best revealed by seeing your life for what it really is right now.

What is the actual quality and state of your love relationships at this moment?

What is the pattern of your finances showing up on the ground today?

What is the condition of your body?

“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The game on the planet is to get ourselves clear. We can create a new story at any time but first we must go eyeball to eyeball with the story we are already being deep down inside. This is not in the domain of thinking. This is the realm of feeling.

“I think therefore I am,” said French philosopher René Descartes. But a more useful philosophy is that “I yam what I yam,” as well stated by cartoon character Popeye the Sailorman.

Popular psychology tells you that all you need to do is change your thoughts to change who you are. I would offer that what you think has nothing to do with what you are (really being).

Human beings are “thrown” into an already existing world. That’s according to philosopher Martin Heidegger. Who you are being is a lot like a baseball in mid-air from the pitcher’s mound to the catcher. You can “think” all you want about changing your spin and direction but you are still headed straight into the catcher’s mitt.

If you are like me, you want to get a handle on the way that you are already being thrown. You want to get ruthlessly honest about the way that you are already always being in the world.

Thus we do the work of looking deeply within.

The deep emotional world is the source of your thoughts and the habitual patterns that show up in your life. Thinking doesn’t give you access back down deep into the emotional world. Feeling does.

Six action steps for thinking or doing something differently on the surface will not create lasting change. We need to identify and tell the truth about the way that our inner unconscious world is already throwing us.

What can we do to actually free ourselves up?

What can we do to shift the story that we are being?

Deep emotional work. You can’t think your way into deep lasting change. You feel your way down into the unconscious emotional world. The old story is an unhealed past stored in your body. You have to feel it to heal it.

Let me give you six steps towards actually freeing yourself up and creating a new story. Yes, these steps require some real work and a long term commitment. There is nothing “overnight” about this approach.

Step #1. Hire a coach.

Or a therapist or a counselor. Make sure you find someone with a track record of producing deep lasting change with clients. Find someone that you resonate with. That person should be someone you want to be like.

You can’t do “the work” alone. You need a guide. You need to be witnessed. You need to be heard.

And, no, usually talking to a best friend over a beer won’t get you there.

The best athletes, the most successful entrepreneurs, the ones who are killing it in your profession, they each have a coach.

Step #2. Join a group.

A men’s group. A workshop providing deep emotional work. An Alcoholics Anonymous group or with an issue you relate to. There are a lot of options out there.

Just like you need a coach or guide to do the work, a group provides those kind of results but on steroids. Being in a room with 25 people and a skilled facilitator can, ultimately, get you 25 times the impact of working with one coach. But, yes, do both a private coach and a regular group experience.

Message me. I can recommend some workshops and some support groups that have worked for me.

If you are like me, you stepped into adolescence by suppressing your little boy deep down inside. You shut down feeling your emotional world. You became emotionally dead. This is how many boys became men.

What you want is a safe group where you can practice connecting to and communicating your emotional world. You want to be around other people who will go there with you.

The opposite of suppressed is expressed.

Step #3. Change your peer group.

If you don’t like what is showing up in your life then choose a different group of people to hang out with.Get different friends. Get different business associates. Get a different lover. Period.

Do you have to get rid of everybody?I don’t know. But you do.

Step #4. Get a spiritual practice.

What does that mean for you? It’s a very individual question. Something for you to work out for yourself.

Personally, I am anti-religious but deeply spiritual. But that’s just me. I have seen too many cases of where religion is a set of thoughts and beliefs which actually keep people isolated from a real, deep connection with a higher mind.

I have had great success with meditation. There are many ways for me to get into a deep meditative state. What you want is to connect with the quiet whisper of a higher knowing. At the very least, you want to get to your quiet place.

Whatever gets you there is a spiritual practice.

It appears that there really is something to prayer. But I haven’t figured it out yet.

Most of us are great at thinking. Few of us have fluid access to our emotions. Few of us have a daily connection with Spirit.

Step #5. Live your passion.

Figure out what you are passionate about. (See: the quiet whisper of a higher knowing, above.) Build your life around that.

If you are in a job that makes you miserable then you are stuck. In so many ways.

Should you quit your job? (I don’t know. But you do.) Build your life around your passion. Many of us build our lives around survival.

Tip of the day: survival is over-rated. In the end, none of us makes it out alive anyway.

Step #6. Find out what is wanted and needed on the planet.

Trust that the passion running through you, what you are passionate about, is your unique contribution to the planet.

The game on the planet, for people like us, is a moment by moment choice to uncover free will and liberate it from the shackles of deep memory. Free will is a shift from a life of survival to a life of creation.

Free will isn’t the same as “what do I want”.

Free will is the ability to be aware of the spin and direction that your life is currently already taking and to be able to tell the truth about it, to yourself. Free will is being connected to a higher knowing about your unique contribution to the world around you. Free will is taking the baby steps today and everyday towards being that contribution.

Before you can be free to create a new story, you need to become intimately aware of the story that you are already being.

About Teddy Herzog

Teddy Herzog is a speaker, author and coach with over 15 years experience in personal development, coaching and workshops. He brings his own unique blend of deep emotional work, a love of the outdoors, and practical experience to audiences and clients. Some of things Teddy is most proud of are his daughter, hiking to the bottom of Mount Everest, nine months living in Guatemala, and a few of the major old house renovations he has produced over the years.

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